The Only Good Indians(24)

Lewis’s breath hitches and he stands all at once, faking resolve, is already at the side of the house, digging for a shovel.

Peta stands at the edge of the concrete watching, her elbows in her hands, parentheses of concern around her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she says. About all of it—the elk, Harley. Maybe even Shaney.

When Lewis comes in thirty minutes later, Harley poured into the hole he dug that was bigger than it needed to be, a blanket and a sleeping bag or two packed in all around him to keep him warm, he steps out of those useless sweatpants, balls them into the kitchen trash, and what he sees nestled in there is a ball of crumbling masking tape.

Peta peeled the elk up from the living room floor. Good, he tells himself, standing there naked, chest heaving, good.

Just, it doesn’t feel good.





SATURDAY


To keep his hands busy, maybe occupy his mind if he’s lucky, Lewis puts the Road King up on the stand, is going to take it down to the frame again, clean and detail every bolt thread, check and double-check every connection, blow every line out twice, make it brand-new, cherrier than cherry.

He’s just gone what he thinks might be a full five minutes without images of Harley cycling through his head when two of Great Falls’ best show up, doing that thing where they park their patrol car across the bottom of the driveway. Lewis keeps on tracing the throttle cable he’s tracing, like that’s the only thing he’s interested in today. The cops walk up spaced out wider than a single shotgun blast. The reason for their spacing, Lewis knows, is that he’s sitting in the dark of the garage, shirt off, hair over his face, and he didn’t walk out to meet them, is making them come to him.

“That really your name?” the first officer asks.

“Like, on purpose?” the second adds.

“What’s this about?” Lewis says, hands in clear view up in the frame of the Road King. Though of course, should they pop him in the back with their .40-calibers just because, then their report could be all about how it looked like he had a gun tucked up under the tank.

“This is about your killer dog,” the second officer says.

“What’d he do?” Lewis asks.

“According to emergency room personnel,” the first officer states, looking at his notebook like reading it but of course he’s not, “a dog at this address bit a man on the face.”

“Silas,” Lewis says with a shrug. “That’s between me and him, isn’t it?”

“Not when the hospital gets involved,” the second officer says. “We have to see if the animal qualifies as a menace, a threat to public safety.”

“Aren’t you people cops, not dog cops?” Lewis says, standing, each of the cops taking a tactical step back, their right hands suddenly loose by their sides.

“We’re the police asking to see your dog,” the first officer says, that thing rising in his voice that isn’t so much saying this call can go bad, but that he’s kind of hoping it will.

“You really want to see him?” Lewis asks.

Where he leads them is the tamped-down grave on the back side of the fence, close to the tracks. He explains to them that he buried Harley there because he liked to bark at the train. They ask what happened to him. Instead of telling them that an elk from back home followed him all the way down here, is apparently on this big revenge arc, and instead of telling them option two, which is that there was something in this house before he even got here, and it’s using his own memories and guilt against him, Lewis just shrugs.

What he also doesn’t tell them is that there’s always the chance that he’s just flat-out losing it, here. That all the bad medicine from that hunt’s built up all these years, has turned into something that’s messing with his head from the inside. Or maybe that repetitive scope-eye he got that day in the snow was worse than he thought, it kicked something loose in his brain, something that’s just now blooming.

“Do you not want to tell us because you put the dog down yourself, and don’t want us checking serial numbers on any unregistered weapons?” the first officer asks.

“You don’t have to register hunting rifles,” Lewis says. “Do you?”

“You shot a deer rifle this close to other houses?” the second officer says, real concern in his eyes.

“Elk rifle,” Lewis corrects. “And no, I didn’t shoot it this close to other houses. He hung himself from the fence, trying to get over.”

“?‘He,’?” the second officer prompts.

“Harley,” Lewis fills in.

“Like your bike,” the second officer says.

Lewis doesn’t dignify this.

“The one you’re taking apart as well,” the second officer says.

“What are you saying?” Lewis asks.

“What are you doing?” the first officer says right back.

Lewis thrusts both his hands up through his hair and like that both cops have drawn, are in that shooting crouch they like.

Going slow, finger by finger, Lewis lowers his hands back to his sides.

Dealing with cops is like being around a skittish horse: No sudden movements, nothing shiny or loud. Zero jokes.

Still, Lewis leans forward, shakes what hair he has to show there’re no weapons there.